Seven Practices that Consume your Time and Destroy Your Productivity

There are a few practices that consume your time and negatively affect your productivity; they are like a thief who steals your precious time.

The writer André Maurois describes these practices in his book An Art of Living, saying: "They don't pity anyone, and they don't hesitate to steal the last moment of those who don't resist them, and if they left people alone, you would find people doing well. These practices may be a visit, a phone call, or an email; dealing with them with patience and kindness is a fatal mistake, and we should not pity them, because allowing them to steal our time is suicide itself.”

It is not difficult to discern common practices these days: email, social networking, media, surfing the net, the way to and from work—we go through them every day, and we may know how to deal with them already, but what about the more dangerous and hidden practices?

Here are seven hidden practices that can endanger your productivity and safety while you are sitting. We usually ignore them or do not notice their existence, preoccupied with avoiding the common types that we mentioned earlier, but what we will mention now can be much more harmful to the professional, health, and management levels of the time.

Seven Practices that Consume your Time and Destroy Your Productivity:

1. Lack of purpose:

In 2018, blogger Blake Gossard published an article on Medium titled "The Epidemic of Aimlessness in America." He accurately described the problem that some people face, which is the lack of a predetermined goal.

We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning—a reason deeper than going to work to earn money. We will not be productive without motivation, around which our lives are centered. Here, we mean efficient productivity, which brings results and is not measured by the number of monotonous tasks we complete during the day.

Not having a goal is a practice that makes you measure your productivity by the difficulty of your life, but it is a mistake to measure efficiency based on how difficult life is. When you focus on work without thinking about the results, you miss an opportunity to use a more productive and effective way to achieve them. So start managing your thoughts right away. What is your main goal and ambition in life? And what do you do every day to get close to it?

Your ambition will guide your decisions in life, help you formulate your goals and plans, help you make your life fulfilling and meaningful, and enable you to answer the question, “Is what I am doing now just a leisure activity or is it an effort that leads to a certain goal?”

When you don't have the time to change something, just remember what the main thing is, and then you will determine what - not how - you will do to achieve the desired results and what actions are not necessarily what you thought they were.

2. Lack of interest:

Time-consuming practices can prevent us from taking any action; The reason for this is not having a goal, as we mentioned above. When we do not know what we want, our ambitions will not be very humble, and we will not know the reason for our lack of interest in what we do, and then the motivation is lost, as is productivity. So here are some other reasons why you might be lacking interest or motivation in your life:

2.1. Lack of self-confidence:

Our confidence affects our productivity. It isn't easy when you say to yourself, “Why try? We will not achieve anything anyway.” To address this, we must look at our past achievements to remind ourselves that we have overcome difficult tasks and achieved challenging goals before, and we can do it this time.

It is also good to identify our limiting beliefs, that is, the unconscious thought patterns that guide our decisions, and to replace them with those that give us strength. This will help us regain confidence to achieve our goals.

2.2. Stress and Exhaustion:

With so much to do, things to deal with, and details to take care of, stress and burnout are inevitable. Who can stay motivated and productive in such circumstances?

Logically, we lose the will to act. These time-consuming practices drain our physical and mental energy, so we lose motivation and interest. To fix this, we need to regularly re-charge our physical and mental powers and prioritize from time to time. It is okay to neglect less important things. So take a break and sleep well. Meditation and journaling can help us clear our minds and find some space for energy and productive work.

2.3. Unhealthy lifestyle:

Lack of interest or motivation is closely related to our physical condition. Chronic fatigue, physical pain such as headaches and back pain, digestive problems, permanent absent-mindedness, and difficulty concentrating on work are signs of the need to change the lifestyle.

Let's try to sleep at least eight hours each night, exercise, eat breakfast, eat well and mindfully, and limit intake of stimulants like caffeine, alcohol, etc.

2.4. “Lack of interest” may be part of our personalities:

How many times have you reaffirmed to yourself that you are not motivated to do anything? Do you tell others that you "need motivation" to keep working? And is there ever a time when you define yourself as a “careless” person? This is how time-consuming practices work, and given that the human brain is lazy, it is not that hard to convince us that the problem of procrastination and our unwillingness to continue working is someone else's fault and not ours.

3. Not prioritizing:

Setting priorities can improve productivity, time management, and overall work-life balance. With clear priorities, we focus better, ignore fear of missing out (FOMO), and become less stressed. But the problem is that many of us suffer from what's called the "everything counts" paradox. We fail to distinguish between urgent and important tasks. As a result, we deprioritize based solely on time sensitivity. We multitask and see that every goal is worth keeping us busy all the time, all of which kills time and has little to do with productivity.

It has long been proven that trying to complete too many tasks at once can lower our productivity and lead us to make irrational decisions. So with erratic priorities, we focus on what is urgent when we should be thinking about what is important.

Remember the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 rule? Don't just spend time prioritizing non-urgent tasks; get real results. Prioritize all your tasks and add them to your calendar based on the times you are most productive.

4. Multitasking:

Although many people think that multitasking means focusing on more than one thing at the same time, this is not the case. Because multitasking means constantly shifting attention between tasks. This makes it a time-consuming exercise that negatively influences our minds and productivity.

Countless studies have proven this. In 2009, Stanford University found that people who multitask were less organized, failed to discern fine details, and struggled to switch from one task to another.

In 2019, Bryan College found that multitasking impairs performance and costs about $450 million in the global market annually, and some researchers suggest that multitasking can reduce productivity by 40%.

It is worth noting that these views are relevant to the workplace. Of course, you can combine eating and walking or folding clothes and watching TV in your private life, but when it comes to productivity at work, it just won't work.

The human mind cannot do many complex things at once. It takes time to switch between them; it can take up to 30 minutes to get back into the workflow, and this can lead to errors.

As a Bryan College study found, multitasking lowers IQ, reduces brain density, and harms our emotional intelligence over time. Interrupting one task and replacing it with another damages short-term memory, reduces attention, and impairs our skills at problem solving.

To avoid multitasking at work for better productivity, try the following:

• Create to-do lists or schedule the completion of each task.
• Minimize distractions and devote yourself to one task at a time.
• Set priorities and delegate tasks to achieve more effective teamwork.
• Practice meditation to train your brain to increase awareness of the present moment and improve your ability to focus.
• Make the most of the Pomodoro Technique, or the Tomato Technique. It is a method of adopting a timing device to divide the work into periods of time.

5. Not having a plan to achieve goals:

Most of us set long and short term goals, write New Year's resolutions, resolve to start doing more, etc. But we fall into the mental trap that as long as those goals are written "on paper", the brain "thinks" they are complete, which is why we often put off some tasks, procrastinate on others, or lose motivation to complete something we set out to do.

We need to change that and make all of our set goals work into a plan for how to achieve each goal on the list. Each goal on your calendar should consist of three steps:

First: Goal design

Think of Smart Goals, make your goal approach-based with clear endpoints, and break it down into sub-goals if needed.

second: Charting the Path

Find many possible ways to achieve this goal. Ask your family, friends, or a mentor to help you develop a detailed plan for how you will follow each path. Think about the resources you will need and plan your progress.

Third: Overcoming obstacles

Take into account all the potential obstacles that may appear in your path and develop strategies that you may use to deal with them.

6. Inability to say no and delegate tasks

You already know the power of saying “no” and its positive effect on your productivity and ability to focus on what's really important. So why is it still so hard to do for most of us? And why are there still so many articles and personal blogs offering tips on learning how to say “no”? When is it right to delegate tasks?

Our inability to say “no” comes from childhood. When someone is raised to be a good person, praised for “helping mom around the house,” ignored, and then seeks attention by pleasing others, we may get used to saying “yes" to the point that we don't even understand what our needs are.

It is a psychological problem; we cannot say “no” for fear of angering those who ask us, and not being able to say “no” is also a time-consuming practice.

We will not find enough time to do what matters to us if we are under the pressure of formal and informal demands, large and small, from managers, colleagues, stakeholders, friends, and family that come in daily and in different ways.

As the American businessman Warren Buffet once said: “Successful people say no to almost everything.” Of course, this does not mean that they do nothing; rather, they control matters. Declining and delegating smartly allows us to make room for what's most important rather than getting bogged down in work.

Saying “no” and delegating tasks are closely related. Understanding what requests should be denied and which are worthy of delegation will reduce workload, save time, and increase productivity. According to Dr. Scott Williams, these are the least impactful benefits that we can get from deliberate delegation.

7. Lack of self-discipline:

Lack of self-discipline causes you to waste more time than you think. Even seemingly innocuous household habits like spending time on social media or not setting a bedtime can kill your work productivity in one fell swoop.

There is a psychological reason why some of us lack self-discipline. First, we may lack it due to a low level of self-confidence, fear of failure, and the feeling that you will not achieve what you want even if you work hard, both of which destroy your discipline, and there are no productivity tools that can help here.

Second, we may lack self-discipline due to our inability to follow a certain routine. Psychologists see several reasons for this: the cognitive load, which is when we have a lot on our minds and it is difficult to add another thing to that list; the effect of indifference, which is when we try something once but fail and then give up; and exhaustion from decision-making, which is when we lack the energy to form a good new habit.

A lack of clear goals and plans can also lead to low self-discipline, but as writer and entrepreneur Brent Gleeson outlined in an article for Forbes: “Self-discipline is the bridge between goals and goals achieved.” So we need it to stay productive, successful, and satisfied.

In conclusion:

These time-consuming practices are interconnected, and each causes the other. To prevent them from completely taking over us and destroying our productivity and health, we must constantly work on our self-growth, take note of our strengths and weaknesses, and not be afraid to ask for help when we need it.

We must set clear goals and plans, create new healthy habits, find a trusted mentor, and make the most of the tools and mechanisms designed to help us save time, increase productivity, and focus on the things that matter the most.